There's a more practical question here. Perhaps it's possible that such biases could be totally overcome, i.e. requiring no conscious effort. But clearly we're not on the verge of doing so. So, if we accept that our society is going to be composed of Us-vs-Them tribalists for the time being... what implications does that have for social policy?
For example, our "rational brain" tells us that racism is bad, but our "lizard brain" is still going to fail the implicit bias test every time. We can consciously override that bias some of the time, but it's still there. Even if you believe that you can consistently override your bias, surely you don't expect that the average person could. So how can a society comprised of "average" people avoid being plagued by racial bias?
Our rational brain -- the part that tries to overcome bias -- is also the part that is responsible for designing our society. And the people designing society tend to be more rational than most. As a result, society is in direct conflict with our lizard brain. If you are not adept at suppressing your automatic responses, you are a bad citizen. For the most part, this is what we want; after all, your lizard brain generates a lot of unsavory impulses, like the desire to enact violence. But I think it's a mistake to disregard the lizard brain entirely. "Whatever your lizard brain says, do the opposite" is unlikely to result in a perfect society. We should continue to push the limits of what we can successfully repress, but we should also be willing to admit when repression has failed.
Thousands of years ago, we began to experiment with repressing our urges to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc. That experiment was largely successful. In modern times, we are launching new experiments, many of which concern implicit bias. We don't know yet whether we can suppress those impulses. And we don't seem to have very good criteria for deciding whether the experiment has succeeded or failed. That concerns me, because it likely means that things have to get really bad before the experiment can be deemed a failure.
> For example, our "rational brain" tells us that racism is bad, but our "lizard brain" is still going to fail the implicit bias test every time.
This is not true. People vary in how much they are biased about race. I normally think of myself as fairly free for innate racism (largely because my early schooling was very multicultural). When I took a light-dark skinned association test, I go a neutral result.
Though to be clear, I don't think I am free from such innate biases in general, but I am fairly unbiased from on race.
> Even if you believe that you can consistently override your bias, surely you don't expect that the average person could.
I don't expect people to completely override their biases, but I do expect that people could mostly eliminate bias for important decisions (hiring, court, etc).
First off, I really like your framework of "lizard brain"/"rational brain"
>We should continue to push the limits of what we can successfully repress, but we should also be willing to admit when repression has failed.
I think we are there already to some extent. This movement to try and repress implicit bias, and to hold people accountable for their implicit bias is a radical failure. Consider that since this movement got started in the West we have become more divided, and more militant about it. Micro-aggression, sexual harassment (becoming very broad and ill defined), and the general expectation that everyone be hyper-PC has riled up the lizard brains of many and even the rational brains of some. You could argue that this is an application of tribalism for good, but I think the problem is that it is too much too fast and is therefore a force of evil. Gay marriage just became legal. Now a certain population wants to normalize in-your-face transsexuals, a spectrum of genders, and social slights as criminal behavior amongst a slew of other wants; hard pushes like this radicalize people, and that's what we are seeing on the right at the moment.
This sexual harassment campaign is especially alienating for a lot of people specifically because sex requires you to disengage your rationale brain and give over to your animalistic desires. I'm not saying all of these men should get a pass, some of them appear to have committed truly heinous acts, but when things are said like "Even though my situation with Matt was consensual, I ultimately felt like a victim because of the power dynamic." [1] It is going to alienate a lot of people who would call that poor willpower. Like, Mr. Lauer is giving in to his lizard brain when he does this and cheats, but so is she when she accepts his offer.
Going back to the main point, I think that this in particular is driving a huge wedge between the sexes in America because it comes across as a double standard, and I think that in order to effectively utilize tribalism for the social good, it is critical to eliminate double standards.
For example, our "rational brain" tells us that racism is bad, but our "lizard brain" is still going to fail the implicit bias test every time. We can consciously override that bias some of the time, but it's still there. Even if you believe that you can consistently override your bias, surely you don't expect that the average person could. So how can a society comprised of "average" people avoid being plagued by racial bias?
Our rational brain -- the part that tries to overcome bias -- is also the part that is responsible for designing our society. And the people designing society tend to be more rational than most. As a result, society is in direct conflict with our lizard brain. If you are not adept at suppressing your automatic responses, you are a bad citizen. For the most part, this is what we want; after all, your lizard brain generates a lot of unsavory impulses, like the desire to enact violence. But I think it's a mistake to disregard the lizard brain entirely. "Whatever your lizard brain says, do the opposite" is unlikely to result in a perfect society. We should continue to push the limits of what we can successfully repress, but we should also be willing to admit when repression has failed.
Thousands of years ago, we began to experiment with repressing our urges to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc. That experiment was largely successful. In modern times, we are launching new experiments, many of which concern implicit bias. We don't know yet whether we can suppress those impulses. And we don't seem to have very good criteria for deciding whether the experiment has succeeded or failed. That concerns me, because it likely means that things have to get really bad before the experiment can be deemed a failure.